Google Play gets Matching Feature

Music junkies in the United States just received a nice surprise from Google in the form of a music matching feature, and free 320kbps cloud streaming from Google Music’s online locker.

Google Music is a free service that allows users to upload a maximum of 20,000 songs to an online storage locker accessible via the web and Android devices. The software itself leaves a small footprint and runs in the background, automatically uploading new tracks from your library. The downside of the service is that for digital music packrats (self included), the initial upload process can literally take weeks (my personal music collection clocks in at 53GB).

Similar to Apple‘s iTunes Match, Google Music will now simply scan your local music library and instantly add those tracks to your locker, though don’t expect to see under-the-radar indie bands to populate just yet. Additionally, Google will provide enhanced 320kbps streaming of the matched files, even if your originals are encoded at a lower bitrate. The icing on the cake is that Google is offering this to users completely free of charge, unlike Apple and Amazon’s similar services which run $25/year.  Also, think of it as a way to backup your collection online.